I'm new too but there one thing that I do know is is that you will need more supers I think what you got is a brood box and you need more for honey. I got a brood box a deep and a medium for brood and they took off so fast that I didn't have the time to get a medium for Honey and they swarmed so now I have at least 3 for spring and going to get more for a split. Good luck with your bee's just make sure you have plenty of box's for your bee's.

You dont need extra supers for the bees to produce honey. They will produce where ever they are. I think you are asking do you need an additional super for the bees to make you some honey. It looks like that hive is 2 deep supers (hive bodies). The "normal" set up would be 2 deeps for the bees then additional medium or shallow supers for you. If you are starting with a package of bees this coming year you probably will be fine without buying the additional supers this year. but you never know I have had packages produce excess honey their first year.

If you have the money to buy extra equipment I would recommend buying a second hive to have on hand. You never know when you might run across a swarm or have the opportunity to split a hive. Nothing worse then coming across a obtainable swarm and not having equipment to put it in and having to let it go.

When you are just starting it is nice to have 2 hives with bees so you can compare the two. having 2 rather then one is really not that much more work, but it is double the fun :)

Brian, my comment to you, just like Greg's, is to get two colonies, not just one. This is a good thing, a couple of reasons are:

If one colony becomes queenless, for whatever the reason and this can happen, you can give that colony brood from the other colony and they can raise a new queen

You can have a comparison colony to see how each one is doing

It is more interesting to watch two colonies (smiling, this is a wonderful thought)

If a colony is much weaker than the other one you can switch the hive locations and get a stronger colony

You can give extra frames of brood to a weaker colony (we should always strive to have equally strong colonies, prevents things like robbing, and so on) There are many other reasons, too, these ones just come to the top of my head

So, think about getting two colonies, if you can afford it. Have a wonderful day, your gonna love to keep bees, you got the fever!!! Cindi

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I recently bought Brushy Mtn's garden hive. Went with 8 frame mediums for everything. If you are using medium frames for brood boxes, you'll need 3 or 4 instead of 2. And it doesn't hurt to have extra supers for just in case. Shipping was the price of a hive.

The bees should drawn and fill 3 madium 8 frame boxes the 1st year, that is what I consider the basic hive and is the equivelent of 2 deep 8 frames. You can get by with as little as 5 boxes per hive as long as you are willing to extract often and rotating the extra 2 supers continuously.

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